Howard Mechanic, Oral History

 

Recorded: October 18, 2019

Interviewed by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

 

[Interviewer]: This is Kathleen Siebert Medicus speaking on Friday, October 18, 2019, at the Department of Special Collections and Archives in the University Library building on the Kent State University, Kent campus. As part of the May 4 Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, I am speaking today with Howard Mechanic. Mr. Mechanic is in Arizona, and we are recording this oral history over the telephone. Howard, thank you so much for joining me today, I really appreciate it.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: It’s my pleasure.

 

[Interviewer]: I’d like to begin with some very brief biographical information, some information about your background. If you could tell us where you were born, where you grew up.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: I was born in 1948 in the Cleveland area, grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

 

[Interviewer]: And you lived there growing up all through high school? You went to high school there?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Right.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you’re a northeast Ohio native.  And could you tell us, you were a student at Washington University, that’s where you went to college in 1970, could you tell us about what in your background led you to where you were on that day, May 4, 1970, on your campus, especially your growing opposition to the Vietnam War?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah, well I graduated from high school in Shaker Heights in 1966 and went to St. Louis to Washington University. And, pretty much, at that time, what would you call somebody who was basically a straight or nerdish type of person and was very good at academics but didn’t have a lot of involvement in any social activities or political activities to speak of, and was more of an old, New Deal type of Democrat as far as my outlook on life.

 

But with the consciousness of the Vietnam War starting to get more and more publicity, around ’67 to ’68, that school year, I was sort of step by step radicalized into opposition against the war and got involved in various activities starting out with draft counseling, which I provided on the campus, and then I ran—helped on the Eugene McCarthy 1968 presidential campaign. Went up to Wisconsin for the primary there and came back to school and, because of all the contacts I had up in Wisconsin and their interests, I shared a lot of their interests that they had, and connected with more people at Washington University, and continue with my activism when I went back to the Cleveland area.

 

Went back home, every summer I’d go back home when I was in college, and I hooked up with some people who were working in Cleveland over the summer, and who were doing organizing around the war. And, coincidentally, I had, every summer—I was good at taking tests and academics—and every summer I took the federal exam to work over the summer for the post office. Worked there a couple summers and I thought I had taken the—checked the box for the post office test for the summer of ’68, but I guess I checked the box for other federal offices, and I ended up working at the defense contract administration during the day while I was organizing against the war at night and had inside contacts. Every week people would come in who were being drafted and it was a little late to try to get them to change what they were doing, but we had some activities around that and ended up going to the Democratic Convention in Chicago that summer of ’68, involved in opposing the war. And I was involved in the police riot there and got gassed with everybody else. And luckily, I didn’t get injured there, but somebody next to me got hit with a baton pretty hard and was bleeding. I just had a lot of gas that I breathed in.

 

Went back to Washington University, ’68, ’69, and continued to be involved in activities. We were trying to get the ROTC program off of campus. ROTC was a Reserve Officers Training Corps, and that’s where the Army and the Air Force, they had separate buildings on the campus to train people for the military, that was an obvious target.

 

We had other targets, and we had one of the board members of Olin, from Olin chemical company, which at that time was a major manufacturer of munitions. A McDonnell Douglas guy was also on the board of the college—a major aircraft manufacturer in the war. So, we were involved in activities regarding that and the draft. The summer of ’69, I had dropped in with some friends who I had worked with over the summer of ’68 when I was back in Cleveland, and then ’69, that was actually a time where the Weathermen Organization got started, which was a group that split off from the SDS, which was Students for a Democratic Society. And I didn’t like some of their ideas about—street fighting is basically what they wanted to do, at that particular time.

 

[Interviewer]: And that’s referring to the SDS, the street fighting?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: That’s the Weathermen. The Weathermen basically were in the SDS and they basically took over the SDS. The organization became the Weathermen Organization.

 

But there are other people who claim that they were still the SDS and it was a different group. I dropped by when they had a meeting there, it was before they were, before they were an underground group, before they were involved in the street fighting stuff, but they were talking about that kind of thing. And eventually they got involved in bombings. But so, I dropped by to talk to some people there. Found out thirty years later that the FBI file said I was a member of the Weathermen Organization and that I should be considered armed and dangerous. And when I went back to college after that summer, was called into the office and there were various administrators there and they said, “Well, we understand you’re a member of the Weathermen.” And I said, “No, I’m not. Where’d you get that idea?” They said, “Well, we’re just going to be, you know, watching you, and you need to be careful of what you’re doing here, and we’re not going to stand for anything that would ever—"

 

[Interviewer]: And those were administrators on your campus when you got back to school, at Washington University?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yep. Right. Well, then that was the start of the school year, ’69-’70 school year. Early in ’70, in the middle of the night somebody burned down one of the two ROTC buildings, I think it was the Air Force ROTC, I believe. And they tried to pin that on me. They didn’t have any evidence against me, but they were ready to charge me. And we heard a couple of the people in the U.S. Attorney’s Office were ready to quit if they charged me. But they didn’t charge me. I had gone to the grand jury, and they called other people asking questions about me at the grand jury. So, they tried to pin that on me. But I guess it didn’t get through the grand jury, for one reason or another. And that was like in March, I believe, of 1970.

 

Well, two months later, it would be May 4th. And right before May 4^th—well, for months we had anti-war demonstrations and disrupted the ROTC activities. They would go out and march around the outside areas and we would disrupt them. We’d even go into the classes and disrupt the ROTC classes, things like that. And the college got a restraining order against various students, and I was one of the listed students. There was, I think it was about twelve, if I remember correctly, that were listed as—had to be—stay away from demonstrations on campus that could cause disruption or whatever.

 

[Interviewer]: I see.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: And I wasn’t served that until May 3rd. I was served with that injunction, restraining order. But then, that night—actually, April 30th is when Nixon announced expansion of the war into Cambodia, which they had been doing for a long time before that. It was considered a secret war in Cambodia. It was only secret to people—the public—it wasn’t secret to the people in Cambodia. They obviously knew they were getting bombed by the Americans. But Nixon announced it April 30th and various campuses that were already active, you know, sort of exploded, including Kent State and Washington University. I mean, it just took the anti-war movement to a different level when Nixon—  We heard that Nixon was going to make a speech April 30th, and I thought, and other people thought, well, you know, He’s going to make a speech and he’s going to announce some kind of cutback of the war, but then it turned out totally different, so people were sort of upset.

 

[Interviewer]: -[00:12:54] Where were you when you heard the speech? Were you with students, were you on campus, in your dorm, or—do you remember?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Actually, I think I was in like a lounge, I’m not sure, but I think I might have been in a student lounge and there were other students there watching on TV the announcement on the TV, and people were pretty disappointed and upset.  And so, May 3rd I got served with that restraining order but, I was upset and then May 4th we already had a demonstration scheduled. We had like a couple a week, and May 4th was a day that we had one scheduled for the evening. And during the day, we heard about what happened at Kent State, and that further inflamed quite a bit. The people were, you know, pretty upset and the day before I was told I couldn’t go to demonstrations, but I just couldn’t stay away.

 

[Interviewer]: How did you hear about what had happened at Kent State?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: I don’t remember. But it wouldn’t have taken long to get through the campus, that kind of news. Pretty sure it got—when somebody heard about it, they told their friends and, we were working together, we had, by that time, we had meetings, regular meetings, there were probably close to a hundred people attending these meetings. Which may not sound like a lot, but it was a small campus. But then when we went to the demonstration, I don’t know how many people showed up, but there were hundreds, hundreds showed up, and other people joined us that weren’t really, maybe planning on it, but when they saw us marching from one area of the campus—we marched over to the remaining ROTC building, it was at night, and some people burned the building down. And I was charged with throwing a cherry bomb firecracker at police and fire personnel.

 

[Interviewer]: And this is on May 4, in the evening, at your protest?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Right. Right. So actually there were two people charged for the same thing, Larry Kogan [00:15:39] was the other person charged. He’s also—he was from Cleveland Heights and he was a buddy of mine. It’s a long story, you can probably read about it.  There was one supposed witness. He was last in his law school class. He was on suspension the previous year from this law school for academics. He ended up being a clerk for a federal judge the next year; that position is reserved for the top students.

 

So, he had no proof. I mean after fifty years. Well, he died, this guy died from a heart attack in the Eighties, but we have no proof of what he was promised in exchange for what he was doing. But that was a situation where there was supposedly one witness against me, who had various testimony that the firecracker came from my vicinity, it came from my person. It could have come from several people. But then he finally said it came from me. I [unintelligible] [00:17:00] say in all those things.

 

[Interviewer]: And you did not, I’m assuming, you did not do this?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: I did not do that. I was there in the crowd, but I was near the back. And I was charged with breaking the restraining order that I was served the day before. I was given a six-month sentence in the county. I served that sentence and, when I was in there—in fact, before I started serving that sentence, the federal government charged me for the same incident. They charged me with a new  federal law that was part of the 1968 Civil Rights—they call it the Civil Disobedience Act. We were a test case, Kogan and I were test case for a section of it. One of the sections was—there was a test case called the Chicago Conspiracy Trial based on the 1968 Chicago [Democratic] Convention. The Chicago Eight were charged, it was a famous case. Have you heard of that one?

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah. So that was a test case for the one and they were charged with crossing state lines to incite a riot, and we were charged with interfering with police or fire personnel protecting a federal function during a civil disorder. I was sentenced to five years.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:18:47] So, then that was a second charge filed against you.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah. Based on the same incident, I’d served the county and, when I was in the county, I had—a lot of the guards there were ex-military and they considered me a traitor or whatever. One of them said that if he had the chance, he’d put a bullet in my head. They wanted to keep me away from the other prisoners, most of them were African American prisoners, and they were afraid that I would indoctrinate these African American prisoners and there would be a riot or something. And so they—I ended up being isolated. The other prisoners were told they couldn’t talk to me. I Had never heard of anything before, and I’ve never heard anything since of that type of situation. Even when on rec, or lunch, or whatever, various prisoners were told they couldn’t talk to me. So, you know, I went through that kind of—it was sort of tough, serving that six-month sentence. And when I got out, I had— my federal trial was on appeal, but I decided I just couldn’t do five years of that. So, I ended up getting an assumed name and living under that assumed name for twenty-eight years after that.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:20:37] There is a piece in the New York Times [“Doesn’t Anybody Know How to be a Fugitive Anymore?” by Lisa Belkin, April 30, 2000]. People can read about what happened after that, and then you ended up serving that time much later in life. That is really a long-term effect that those events had on your life.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yep, that was a long-term effect and, you know, I still—even though I got a full presidential pardon in 2001 after going back in prison and served a year and I got a pardon.

 

I live in a politically conservative community. Arizona is conservative, and this county is the Yavapai County in Prescott, Arizona, and it’s considered the most conservative county in a conservative state. So, some people still consider me a traitor or whatever else. So, it’s not that much anymore as far as the way it affects me. But it does come up still on occasion.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:21:50] I’m wondering if, for now, if we could go back to May 4, 1970, and maybe describe for us, so people here at Kent State have a picture of kind of what was happening on your campus that day, what the march, there was a march across campus as part of this anti-war protest, people were more upset after hearing about the shootings here. Maybe just kind of paint for us more of a picture of what you saw that day?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]: That’d be great.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah. Because we had demonstrations for, you know, a couple of years really, but they were building and building and then that particular day, we had heard about what happened at Kent State and it was just—we knew when we showed up that evening and just—we can get a feeling from the crowd that it was an angry crowd. And we had a couple—a few people gave speeches, and I wasn’t considered a leader of the group in any way, I really didn’t give much in the way of public speaking and various people made speeches and—

 

[Interviewer]: And where on campus were you, outdoors, or—?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: That was in what was called a quadrangle, which is an outside area in the center of campus. It was a big crowd and, we’d had a lot of other crowds but this one was a lot bigger and a lot angrier. And after the speeches, people just started marching towards the ROTC building and—which we’d done before. We had marches over to the ROTC building before, but this one was a little different. As soon as we got there, somebody threw probably a rock—and people—there were rocks that were thrown that night and somebody knocked out a light that was a big, like a streetlight, above the ROTC building, and a couple seconds after we got there, somebody hit that light with a rock and then the crowd cheered. And then, people were throwing rocks at the building.

 

And then, some people actually went into the building and started picking up papers and lighting them. There were a lot of pictures. See, the U.S. Attorney was watching us, the FBI was watching us, they knew we were doing this for a long time—these types of activity, not burning down building—but there were a lot of informers even on our campus. [00:25:04] Subsequently, we found out that five or six active informers, or even agents, that—so, actually the U.S. Attorney was there in his dress suit. He had left a cocktail party to come over and watch what was going on that night. They had a photographer there also. So, it was like on a stage, what was happening, and they had a couple of hundred photos. I wasn’t in any of the photos. But they had photos of people lighting papers and lighting the building and the fire department showed up. People were throwing rocks and the fire department backed out and left. They couldn’t deal with that. There were police there also, who were trying to control things, but there weren’t that many police. But during the activity, by the end, more police showed up and people left. But that was—it was basically a done deal by that time that the police showed up and people left. Some people got charged with sabotage during wartime, which is another unusual charge. There are very few people ever charged under that provision. There’s one guy who was not a student who came over to the campus. We had many people who came over for the anti-war activities but lived in the community. He got charged under sabotage, plus two others got charged for sabotage. But he served like—he had a twenty-year sentence.

 

And there were actually, I think, five people charged with federal crimes, including me and Kogan [00:27:36] and this guy, plus a couple other ones. And the case was handled with direction from Washington D.C. We discovered later that the local U.S. Attorney was told that this was a case that the federal government wanted to pursue and they wanted to make test cases here and teach people a lesson. So, there were a few locations around the country where that was done at that particular time, and we’re the one of the—I think there were five locations where they decided they—it was part of the COINTELPRO Program. They wanted to set an example. You know, one thing, when the people were marching from the quadrangle to the ROTC building, the crowd was chanting, “Kent State! Kent State!” You know, we had other chants too, but that was one of the chants.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:28:52] Do you know if there are any photographs of that? Of either the speech, the crowd in the quadrangle, or the crowd on the way to the ROTC building from the photographs you mentioned?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah, there’s a lot of—there’s photographs, yeah, there are historical photographs of the situation there and the trials. There were photographs presented during the trials. The other trials they had, they had to actually have photos of some of these people inside the ROTC building holding papers they were burning. You know, so they actually had those kinds of photos.

 

[Interviewer]: Like evidence, yeah.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah. But like I said, they had a lot of pictures of—the newspaper had photos from the quadrangle, we had a campus newspaper. Plus, there was a St. Louis newspaper had their own photographer there, plus the U.S. Attorney had a photographer at the ROTC location, because they had heard that we were going to march to the ROTC, so they had their photographer there.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:30:08] Would you say that crowd at the quadrangle and then marching to ROTC building, was it predominantly students from your campus? I mean there were community members as well, but—

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah, I’d say, it’d be over eighty percent students, or also staff. Eighty percent students and staff, maybe twenty percent from the community would be my guess. And we also had students come over from St. Louis University, they had some activities over there. That was a Catholic college. They had certain type of activities over there, but we had more activities of this type on our campus. We had some students come over that we worked with before.

 

[Interviewer]: And were you, so were you arrested that night, on the spot? Were you—

 

[Howard Mechanic]: No.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: This supposed witness talked to the FBI a few days later and that’s when I was arrested.

 

[Interviewer]: Were you able to finish school? Were you able to graduate? You were a senior at that point, right?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Right, and that situation was interesting because a lot of people would think, well, you know, he got arrested May 4th and, that was the end of his college career. Except that was the end of the college for that year. Probably Kent State and other colleges, there were hundreds of colleges that ended early because of the unrest around the college campuses. Our college basically closed down a couple weeks early and I did graduate. I was only in prison—I was in jail, you know, when I was arrested, I was in jail overnight and then made bond. So I went back and the school was out anyways, shortly there—a few days after that, I think. And so I did graduate.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:32:23] So, how long was Washington University, they just sort of ended the semester early, and then did things return back to normal, I mean, the following fall?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: I think that the mood in the fall was much different. It was more like we were a little shellshocked with the way we were being attacked by the federal government, and it wasn’t just me. I mean, I was being charged, but the other students felt like, you know, we were being targeted. And there were still plenty of anti-war activities, but it wasn’t like people were going around throwing rocks or getting involved in anything like that. So, it was a totally different mood at that particular time.

 

[Interviewer]: And you were, were you back in school that fall of 1970 then, you were still taking classes?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: No, I had already graduated.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, you had graduated at that point.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: I was there for my trials. I had to stick around and be involved with what was going on. And then the next year, after I served my six-month sentence, I came out and I was around for a few months and I went back home for a while and sold some things to get some money together. I had a collection of records and I had a collection of what was called space covers, they were commemorative space envelopes for—I had a lot of autographs of astronauts and cosmonauts and scientists and things like that. Sold that so I could get some money together because, by that time, I was planning on leaving. I left around September of ’72 and my case is still under appeal but I didn’t want to be available for pickup as soon as my appeal was denied. So, I started using an assumed name before the appeal was completed. And I went to—I left St. Louis for Arizona and started living under an assumed name. I was hoping my appeal would go through, but I heard a couple months later, because I was keeping in touch, that the appeal was denied and there was a warrant for my arrest at that particular time. So, I just kept using the assumed name at that time.

 

[Interviewer]: Good grief, I can’t imagine.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: It’s hard for people—what I was going to say, a lot of people can’t imagine that, but the times were different. There were people leaving for Canada, you know, thousands and thousands of people leaving for Canada. Or even, if they were drafted, they’d live under an assumed name, just so they wouldn’t have to be drafted. And we’re talking about a lot of people doing that. My situation is quite a bit different just because I had already been sentenced to five years and people in Canada, they were able to come back after President Carter allowed them to come back. But I couldn’t come back.

 

And then in the year 2000, when I turned myself in, in 2000, my appeals were all over. There was nothing I could do except report for prison and I couldn’t apply even for a pardon. We could apply for a commutation of sentence, but when you’re serving a sentence, the federal rules were that you couldn’t apply for a pardon until your sentence is finished. So, we weren’t able to apply for a pardon, but other people were allowed to lobby for a pardon direct to the president. We apply for pardon through the Office of Pardon Attorney. And luckily, we had a lot of support and there were at least five people, that we found out afterwards, that actually talked to the president about my case.

 

[Interviewer]: I mean, there was no physical, tangible evidence against you.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: No.

 

[Interviewer]: And this whole time, were people helping you with legal funding to mount these appeals and defend yourself with lawyers? I mean, how did you—?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Which time you talking about?

 

[Interviewer]: Any of it. It must have been difficult, I guess, is what I mean.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Well, at college, I’d worked with this group, because other people were arrested before that. We had a group called the Legal Defense Fund and we had helped people in their legal defense. And so, when I had my problems, Legal Defense Fund helped out. My parents also helped out in providing funds.

 

But then, in 2000, I had a successful business that I had run. I was actually running two successful businesses at that time in 2000, and one of them I’m still running. The one I’m running now I’ve had since 1973, I started a year after I came to Arizona. It’s a natural health product industry. And so, I had some money. I had a few days before I turned myself in—I mean, that’s another story entirely. But I was, you probably know the situation. I had got started—when I first was living under assumed name, I would stay away from police as much as possible, stay away from the public as much as possible. And over twenty-eight years, I just started getting more and more involved in community affairs and politics and things and I ended up writing for the alternative weekly [narrator’s clarification: the title is The Current alternative weekly] and was featured on TV for the Clean Elections Campaign in Arizona, which we were successful in passing a statewide initiative. I was the chair of the steering committee of Arizonans for Clean Elections while, you know, living underground. And was involved in other activities and I was—you know, so I left my guard down and ended up people wanted me to run for city council in Scottsdale and I made the mistake of doing that and that’s, you know, when I turned myself in.


And I did have money, I had two days before I turned myself in to arrange for a lawyer. And wasn’t a whole lot the lawyer could do. Like I said, I had exhausted all my appeals, and it’s just a matter of being—he was able to negotiate that I would be held in prison in Arizona instead of being sent back to St. Louis, who wanted me there. But they almost sent me back to St. Louis anyways, that’s a different story. After they promised they weren’t going to do it. I had people in Arizona, I had people working on my case for public support in St. Louis. There was a lot of active people there and all over the country. And we had two TV programs, major programs, we had Dateline NBC, which was an hour program about my case, and then American Justice with Bill Kurtis. In addition to that New York Times piece, which was major. So, yeah, it was one of the three cases that Michael Moore asked the president to pardon, and I was only one of the three that was pardoned.

 

[Interviewer]: That actually received a presidential pardon.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Leonard Peltier was one and he’s still in prison. And Lori Berenson, she just got out a couple of years ago. So, it was high-profile. I mean, I didn’t think it would be that high-profile, but one of my friends told me, back in 2000, after I was in prison. She wrote me a letter and said, you know, “I woke up this morning and my clock radio was going and it was on the NPR news and it was talking about this fugitive who got arrested after twenty-eight years and I thought I was still sleeping and dreaming, and I woke up and realized that was really what was going on.” The people that hadn’t seen me for twenty-eight years and they got together and helped me and got a big campaign going, so, that’s what happened.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:42:45] Do you mind if I ask about, maybe even also going back to 1970 to 1972, what your family was going through—your parents? How supportive, they were supportive of you, obviously, as their son. This must have been very difficult for them, as well.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Yeah, we had arguments about some of the activities; we had a generation gap back then. So, they didn’t see eye to eye to what I was doing, but they ended up supporting me as much as they could during the trials and they came out to St. Louis and helped out. And I never told them that I was going to be leaving but, when I came back to Cleveland the summer of ’71, I believe, I had started selling things, they sort of got the idea of what I was doing. I was telling people I was selling stuff so I could afford my legal fees, but they sort of knew that the legal fees were already taken care of. But we had other fees coming up. But, I never really told them but I think they realized, you know, what was going on and they—I remember my dad saying, “You just need to go to jail, serve the five years and get it over with.” You know, something like that happened today that’s probably what I would do and that’s probably what most people would do. Just go in and serve your five years to get it over with, but those times were a little different.

 

I told them—I left a note with a friend when I left. It was an envelope, a letter to my parents that had a note in it and I told them I was leaving. And so, they got that letter a few days later and they didn’t know where I was because I didn’t want to be in touch with them. There was about two years, about—oh, I think it was about a year or so before I really wanted to get in touch with them. I just didn’t want to be involved in—first of all, it was a risk to call them up. So actually, the first time, I actually called my aunt up and had her schedule my parents to come over to her house a few days later and then I called back there. And then, for years, they would call me from—I would go to a phone booth and I would call them at my aunt’s house, or they would call me in phone booths, that type of thing. We did that for a few years and then finally met them in the mid—I think it was mid-seventies I actually met them in—had them come out to Las Vegas and we met there.

 

Well, the funny thing is, one of my businesses that I was saying, in 2000 I had two successful businesses. One of them was an apartment hotel in Scottsdale and we had twelve apartments. One-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments that people would come out for the winter. We’d have winter visitors. It was a resort-type place. And then, they ended up coming out to Arizona and staying somewhere else, but after a couple years, they started staying right next door to me in one of the apartments next door, next door to the office where I was living. And so they were right next door to me. So, it changed quite a bit over the twenty-eight years as far as being in touch with them. But I just couldn’t, with my friends, I just didn’t want to get them involved, you know. As soon as I would contact somebody, they would be at risk themselves, harboring a fugitive. So, I just didn’t contact too many people. And one of my friends I met in San Francisco, when I was in the area. But they didn’t even know the name I was using and I just wanted to meet him and talk to them for a while and a mutual friend had him meet me at a park and I talked to him. So, I was able to meet a few people like that, but not too much.

 

[Interviewer]: And then you didn’t tell that person the name you were using so they wouldn’t—

 

[Howard Mechanic]: [00:48:11] No. At the FBI, we found out, thirty years later, and we still even, I got, like six months ago, I got more files, just six months ago, believe it or not.

 

[Interviewer]: The files the FBI had compiled about you?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: They had thousands of pages. Most of them were black, half the pages redacted. Some of them, the whole pages are redacted. We found in there that they thought I was in the Weathermen Organization because I was at this one meeting I’d mentioned. They also claimed that I was at a Weathermen activity called Days of Rage, which is in the fall of 1969 in Chicago, and that’s when Weathermen had taken over the SDS. But I went to Chicago for this other group, this other SDS group, which we had an anti-war demonstration. It was around the same time. And they claimed I went to the Weathermen demonstration. That is a famous thing, you may have seen movies of it, where the Weathermen came to this demonstration wearing helmets and bringing baseball bats and they just—they marched through Chicago and end up fighting the police. But the FBI files said I was there, they said I went there with certain people, I was in a certain car with a certain license plate number and whatever, but I had witnesses who know I wasn’t there, that I was at the other location. So we basically found out what was going on with the COINTELPRO Program regarding me. And at least we found enough to know what’s going on. We found that there was another witness that night, that they had another witness, and they never produced the other witness. So, I could have been exonerated if they produced this other witness.

 

But, like I said, they had thousands of pages. But they had more and more and there’s one person who was—actually, she was fourteen years old back then in 1970, she was a daughter of my attorney. My attorney was Louis Gilden [00:50:51] and he would talk about the case when he came home, and he was very upset when he lost the case. Well, anyway, she grew up and became a documentary filmmaker. She won an Emmy for her one documentary. Her name’s Nina Gilden Seavey. And she’s the head of the documentary center at Georgetown [narrator’s clarification: at George Washington University]. Well she, after making a lot of documentaries over her life, she figured the last one she’s going to do is going back to her childhood and she’s doing this podcast, supposed to come out next year, called My Fugitive. It's going to be split, I think, like a five-part, five-hour program. But she had the largest request for Freedom of Information ever, as far as the number— she has something like 100,000 pages. She wanted information about the COINTELPRO and who informers were and if she can get information. Well, she hasn’t made much progress on that because they’re still not releasing names. Even the guy who was a supposed witness in my case, he died, and they still won’t release any documents. They say they have no documents on this guy. He was the major—he was the only witness, he was, ended up being a clerk for a federal judge, and they have no documents on him at all. Yeah, so it’s not over with.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:52:32] I’m guessing it wasn’t real easy for you to obtain your FBI files either? That probably was challenging.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Well, it’s, you know, I gave her rights to request files on my behalf. But before that, and I did that like, I don’t know, ten years ago or something, I don’t know maybe around, maybe eight years ago. Before that I had filed, from prison. And they told me, Well, we have, I think they said, 37,000 pages or something, I don’t, something ridiculous. And they say, you know, “That’ll take a few years to get to.” I’m sitting in prison trying to get out and they tell me, well, you know, “We’re not going to get that to you for a few years. But if you cut your request back to about six hundred pages, we can probably get to it within six months.” So, I thought that was a better option when I’m sitting in prison. So, I limited my request for certain categories of information, so I didn’t—but I don’t believe I got anything until I got out and then I started seeing what was there. It didn’t help in the appeal. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get anything while I was in prison.

 

[Interviewer]: Incredible story. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about that we haven’t covered, at this point?

 

[Howard Mechanic]: No, I think that’s probably good enough for the archives there and people want to—there’s other materials out there if somebody wants to look, look into some of the things we referenced, to get more details on it. I think that there’s sufficient stuff out there, plus Nina’s thing, her story about My Fugitive, it’s not just going to be about me, it’s going to be about the whole undercover operations and it’s probably going to be—a small part will be about me, but it’s going to be an interesting story, you might look for it.

 

[Interviewer]: That’ll be another resource for people studying that history, absolutely.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Well, good luck. And I’m planning on being out there on May 4th. Maybe I can say hello, I don’t know if I’ll ever find you, but—

 

[Interviewer]: That would be—we’ll make that happen, don’t worry.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: You’ll make what happen?

 

[Interviewer]: I’m sure we’ll be able to meet when you visit Kent State. Thank you. So, thank you again so much, Howard, for being able to share your story with us and taking the time to record it with me. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

 

[Howard Mechanic]: Okay, you’re welcome. Okay, bye-bye.

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you.

 

 

[End of interview]

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